1923 in science
Encyclopedia
The year 1923 in science
and technology
involved some significant events, listed below.
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
involved some significant events, listed below.
Aeronautics
- Juan de la CiervaJuan de la CiervaJuan de la Cierva y Codorníu, 1st Count of De La Cierva was a Spanish civil engineer, pilot and aeronuatical engineer. His most famous accomplishment was the invention in 1920 of the Autogiro, a single-rotor type of aircraft that came to be called autogyro in the English language...
invents the autogyroAutogyroAn autogyro , also known as gyroplane, gyrocopter, or rotaplane, is a type of rotorcraft which uses an unpowered rotor in autorotation to develop lift, and an engine-powered propeller, similar to that of a fixed-wing aircraft, to provide thrust...
, a rotary-winged aircraft with an unpowered rotor.
Astronomy
- October 21 - First official public showing of a planetariumPlanetariumA planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation...
projector, a Zeiss model at the Deutsches MuseumDeutsches MuseumThe Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of technology and science, with approximately 1.5 million visitors per year and about 28,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology. The museum was founded on June 28, 1903, at a meeting of the Association...
in MunichMunichMunich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
.
Biology
- Karl von FrischKarl von FrischKarl Ritter von Frisch was an Austrian ethologist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973, along with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz....
publishes "Über die ‚Tiersprache|Sprache‘ der Bienen. Eine tierpsychologische Untersuchung" ("On the 'language' of bees: an examination of animal psychology").
Medicine
- February - The Maudsley HospitalMaudsley HospitalThe Maudsley Hospital is a British psychiatric hospital in South London. The Maudsley is the largest mental health training institution in the country...
, established jointly by the London County CouncilLondon County CouncilLondon County Council was the principal local government body for the County of London, throughout its 1889–1965 existence, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council...
and Henry MaudsleyHenry MaudsleyHenry Maudsley was a pioneering British psychiatrist.-Biographical sketch:Henry Maudsley was born on an isolated farm near Giggleswick in the North Riding of Yorkshire and educated at University College London. He was an outstandingly brilliant medical student, collecting ten Gold Medals and...
, admits its first psychiatric patients.
Paleontology
- July 13 - An American Museum of Natural HistoryAmerican Museum of Natural HistoryThe American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...
expedition to MongoliaMongoliaMongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...
under Roy Chapman AndrewsRoy Chapman AndrewsRoy Chapman Andrews was an American explorer, adventurer and naturalist who became the director of the American Museum of Natural History. He is primarily known for leading a series of expeditions through the fragmented China of the early 20th century into the Gobi Desert and Mongolia...
is the first in the world to discover fossilFossilFossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
dinosaurDinosaurDinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...
eggEgg (biology)An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...
s. Initially thought to belong to the ceratopsian ProtoceratopsProtoceratopsProtoceratops is a genus of sheep-sized herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaur, from the Upper Cretaceous Period of what is now Mongolia. It was a member of the Protoceratopsidae, a group of early horned dinosaurs...
, they were determined in 1995 actually to belong to the theropod OviraptorOviraptorOviraptor is a genus of small Mongolian theropod dinosaur, first discovered by the paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews, and first described by Henry Fairfield Osborn, in 1924...
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Awards
- Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
s- PhysicsNobel Prize in PhysicsThe Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
: Robert Andrews Millikan - ChemistryNobel Prize in ChemistryThe Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...
: Fritz PreglFritz PreglFritz Pregl , was an Austrian chemist and physician from a mixed Slovene-German-speaking background... - MedicineNobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineThe Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
: Frederick Grant Banting and John James Rickard Macleod
- Physics
- Copley MedalCopley MedalThe Copley Medal is an award given by the Royal Society of London for "outstanding achievements in research in any branch of science, and alternates between the physical sciences and the biological sciences"...
: Horace LambHorace LambSir Horace Lamb FRS was a British applied mathematician and author of several influential texts on classical physics, among them Hydrodynamics and Dynamical Theory of Sound... - Wollaston MedalWollaston MedalThe Wollaston Medal is a scientific award for geology, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London.The medal is named after William Hyde Wollaston, and was first awarded in 1831...
for Geology: William Whitaker
Births
- January 1 - Daniel GorensteinDaniel GorensteinDaniel E. Gorenstein was an American mathematician. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1950 under Oscar Zariski, introducing in his dissertation Gorenstein rings...
(d. 19921992 in scienceThe year 1992 in science and technology involved many significant events, some listed below.-Astronomy:* First confirmed detection of extrasolar planets with the discovery of several terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12 by Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail.* Asteroid 5751 Zao...
), mathematician - February 13 - Chuck YeagerChuck YeagerCharles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager is a retired major general in the United States Air Force and noted test pilot. He was the first pilot to travel faster than sound...
, pilot - March 9 - Walter KohnWalter KohnWalter Kohn is an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist.He was awarded, with John Pople, the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1998. The award recognized their contributions to the understandings of the electronic properties of materials...
, physicist - April 2 - G. Spencer-BrownG. Spencer-BrownGeorge Spencer-Brown is a polymath best known as the author of Laws of Form. He describes himself as a "mathematician, consulting engineer, psychologist, educational consultant and practitioner, consulting psychotherapist, author, and poet.".-Life:Spencer-Brown passed the First M.B...
, mathematician - September 9 - Daniel Carleton GajdusekDaniel Carleton GajdusekDaniel Carleton Gajdusek was an American physician and medical researcher who was the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for work on kuru, the first human prion disease demonstrated to be infectious....
, virologist - November 18 - Alan ShepardAlan ShepardAlan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. was an American naval aviator, test pilot, flag officer, and NASA astronaut who in 1961 became the second person, and the first American, in space. This Mercury flight was designed to enter space, but not to achieve orbit...
(d. 19981998 in scienceThe year 1998 in science and technology involved many events, some of which are included below.-Astronomy and space exploration:* January–September – Cosmologists from the Supernova Cosmology Project led by Saul Perlmutter and the High-z Supernova Search Team led by Adam Riess and Brian...
), astronautAstronautAn astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
.
Deaths
- February 10 - Wilhelm Röntgen (b. 18451845 in scienceThe year 1845 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Events:* January 14 – Physikalische Gesellschaft zu Berlin established and begins publishing Fortschritte der Physik and Verhandlungen....
), physicistPhysicistA physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
, discoverer of X-rayX-rayX-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...
s, NobelNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
laureate. - February 24 - Edward MorleyEdward MorleyEdward Williams Morley was an American scientist famous for the Michelson–Morley experiment.-Biography:...
(b. 18381838 in scienceThe year 1838 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Astronomy:* Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel makes the first accurate measurement of distance to a star, 61 Cygni, using parallax...
), chemistChemistA chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
. - March 8 - Johannes Diderik van der WaalsJohannes Diderik van der WaalsJohannes Diderik van der Waals was a Dutch theoretical physicist and thermodynamicist famous for his work on an equation of state for gases and liquids....
(b. 18371837 in scienceThe year 1837 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Astronomy:* August 9 - Edward C. Herrick, in New Haven, Connecticut, identifies the Perseids as an annual phenomenon....
), physicist. - March 27 - James DewarJames DewarSir James Dewar FRS was a Scottish chemist and physicist. He is probably best-known today for his invention of the Dewar flask, which he used in conjunction with extensive research into the liquefaction of gases...
(b. 18421842 in scienceThe year 1842 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Exploration:* Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross charts the eastern side of James Ross Island and on January 23 reaches a Farthest South of 78°09'30"S.-Medicine:...
), chemist. - August 23 - Hertha Ayrton (b. 18541854 in scienceThe year 1854 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Astronomy:* July 22 - Discovery of the asteroid 30 Urania by John Russell Hind....
), electrical engineer. - December 27 - Gustave EiffelGustave EiffelAlexandre Gustave Eiffel was a French structural engineer from the École Centrale Paris, an architect, an entrepreneur and a specialist of metallic structures...
(b. 18321832 in scienceThe year 1832 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Biology:* Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire begins publication of Histoire générale et particulière des anomalies de l’organisation chez l’homme et les animaux, a key text on teratology.-Exploration:* April 21 -...
), structural engineerStructural engineerStructural engineers analyze, design, plan, and research structural components and structural systems to achieve design goals and ensure the safety and comfort of users or occupants...
.